Research shows that if your web pages take longer than 5 seconds to load, you lose 50% of your viewers and sales. As a UNIX admin often end users and web developers complain about website loading speed and timings. Usually, there is nothing wrong with my servers or server farm. Fancy java script and images / flash makes site pretty slow. These tools are useful to debug performance problems for sys admins, developers and end users. Here are six tools that can analyzes web pages and tells you why they are slow. Use the following tools to:

Drupal is a free, functional and open source modular framework and content management system (CMS) written in PHP. Now a startup company will release the first commercially supported distribution of Drupal, in the second half of this year. Acquia company cofounded by Dries Buytaert, Drupal creator and project leader project leader, will sell annual subscriptions for Drupal software and services:

Our software products will include Drupal core, plus various contributed modules, and, potentially, non-Drupal software, assembled into packaged distributions. Our first planned distribution is code named â€œCarbonâ€, more information is available in the Projects section of our site.

Companies such as Forbes and The Onion have used it this service to build web sites. More information available at Acquia web site (via Yahoo news).

Linux creator Linus Torvalds, in an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation Tuesday, stressed that version 2 of the GPL (GNU General Public License) still makes the most sense for the Linux kernel over the newer GPL version 3. Among GPL 3 highlights are protections against patent infringement lawsuits and provisions for license compatibility. Torvalds acknowledged he had spoken out against GPL 3 before it was released. He had opposed digital rights management provisions in early-2006, calling them burdensome.

On patent trolls, he says:

Yeah, they’re kind of like the tourists that you can’t bomb because there’s nothing there to bomb. There are just these individuals that don’t have anything to lose. That breaks the whole cold war model and seems to be one of the reasons that even big companies are now starting to realize that patents and software are a really bad idea.

The in-depth discussion has been split into two parts; the first segment is available today at Linux foundation blog. The next installment will be available in two weeks. Transcripts are also available on the LF website.